James Factora:
One of the things that always, like, attracted me to like emo was the kind of like, weird things that they did with gender and stuff. I think the first one that comes to mind is probably “Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” by Panic! at the Disco. The chorus to me, like to this day is still just like such a standout where he’s like, “Testosterone boys and like harlequin girls.” Um, that was kind of, uh, the start of everything.
<THEME>
I’m Sarah Esocoff and this is Sounds Gay, a podcast about the intersection of music and queerness. One of the things I’ve been hoping to do with this show is actually get deep into the down-and-dirty process of creating something. How do our identities get fused into the sounds we make?
So when we found these two friends, two people with a lot in common who’d been wanting to collaborate for a while, we were excited to see what they would do. We asked them if they’d be interested in making some brand new music, just for our show. And what they came up with turned out to be an intricate portrait of gender dysphoria, and Filipinx identity.
James:
My name is James Factora. I use he/they pronouns and I live in Brooklyn. And I'm a writer and a musician.
Koji Shiraki:
My name's Koji. I play guitar and I sing. And I am mixed. I’m Filipino-Okinawan-Japanese-Hawaiian. James and I met at a queer Filipinx like support group. And I really never had like queer Filipinx friends before.
That wasn’t the only similarity. James told me that one day in their support group, Koji mentioned being a musician. James did a quick Google search and learned that Koji had released a lot of music on labels they admired.
James:
So I like came up to them after and was like, hey, like I saw that you do all this cool stuff. And like, it was also maybe the first time that I had like personally met like a trans Filipino who was like making the kind of like emo, like, guitar music that I was really into.
Koji and James had wanted to make music together since they met, so I suggested they do so for this episode. They would write one song, and, since they lived on opposite sides of the country, the writing process would be a relay. James would write a little piece of the song—maybe chords, or a melody, or some lyrics. Then they’d send whatever they wrote to Koji. Koji would listen to what James sent, and add something of their own. They agreed to let me sit in on all of their songwriting sessions—which means, you’ll get to hear them too. Three sessions with James and three with Koji.
They also agreed not to talk about the song before they started writing it—or while writing it, for that matter. The only form of communication they had were the bits of music they sent back and forth via email.
It’s a tricky songwriting format. But luckily, it was really easy for them to agree on the first big question: the musical genre they were going to tackle.
James:
We're writing a Filipemo song, which is a portmanteau of Filipino and emo, which I strongly identify with.
James told me that growing up they knew lots of Filipino kids who were into emo.
James:
Emo music is actually like really popular in like the Philippines.
So, it was a natural choice.
James:
Hi!
Sarah Esocoff:
Hey, how's it going?
James:
I'm good. How are you?
Sarah:
Good!
James:
Come on in.
Sarah:
Thank you.
For the first songwriting session, James welcomes me into his Brooklyn apartment so I can assume my position as a fly on the wall. He hasn’t had a chance to eat breakfast yet, but he’s prepared a bowl of yogurt, quinoa, and beets from his local CSA for after I leave.
Since James is going first, he’s tasked with creating the foundation that Koji has to work with. And he decides to look to his middle school obsession, the band My Chemical Romance, for inspiration.
James:
I feel like there's just like a lot of themes of like, people being like punished, I guess, like for queerness or like some kind of deviation, like in My Chem’s like discography. I was listening to “Mama” and that one in particular has this lyric that's like, You should have raised a baby girl/I should have been a better son. Which a lot of people have, like, kind of made that connection as being very, like, trans.
Excerpt of “Mama”:
Mama, we all go to Hell
Mama, we all go to Hell
James:
I call myself trans cuz it's like the most like legible way to like describe like an interior experience, but it's like, I identify as like trans, or as like non-binary, as a way of encapsulating, just like existing within a system that wasn't really built for me and within a system that was like used as, and continues to be used, as a tool of colonialism .
James noodles on guitar.
James:
Koji and I both kind of in our writing kind of stray more toward the standard like time signatures and the sort of like four-chord chord progressions, not necessarily like super-duper like complex riffs or anything like that. Here is a chord progression. Um…
James plays a chord progression.
James:
There will be a bridge at some point.
More playing.
James:
Okay. Yeah.
Sarah:
Sweet! Sounds good to me!
James:
Awesome. Alright. Filipemo song, demo one. Okay.
<EMAIL SENDING SOUND>
James:
It has been sent.
<EMAIL RECEIVE SOUND>
Sarah:
Can you say what your zoom background is?
Once Koji had received James’s chords, I set up a time to dip into their songwriting session—this time virtually. Koji spoke to me from their home in LA.
Koji:
Oh yeah. My zoom background is a palm tree and waves. Um, kind of gentle waves rolling up onto a beach. [laughs]
Sarah:
I just want people to be able to picture this because I feel like it's very part of our interviews that there's like a gently blowing palm tree video video background, not a photo. Um, do you remember the first show that you put on?
Koji:
I was very lucky. I got started playing shows when I was like 12. I researched on like a punk message board how to book a show. And I figured out you can go to like fire halls or township halls and ask them to rent the space and then you get an adult to sign the paper to do it. So I like, I had saved up money to give to my parents to sign out like a fire hall. And I booked my own show, made the flyer, booked the bands, did the sound. So like I was doing shows all the time and they were always benefit shows cuz the bands I liked were political. Cuz I was—I was trying to confront something. I just don't know what. It was like, I wanted to rebel and I was looking for music that was about rebellion cuz I was getting into fights with kids. And it was different for my brother four years later because I had fought the fights that I did against people who were being racist towards me. And then in fourth grade I wrote my first petition to make the, uh, dress code and punishment code, gender neutral. Cuz I—I didn't realize at the time I was non-binary and I didn't feel a part of it either group. But I didn't like that I was being punished as a boy.
Sarah:
You sound like just like the world's most industrious kid.
Koji:
I was just so—I was stoked. Like I was like, I was really excited. And like, for me, adulthood is about like keeping that fire alive. Just making it social, like people being open to creating. And like I'm just always seeking that.
Sarah:
On that note, should we listen to what James sent?
James’ chord progression.
Koji:
Cool. Yeah I love that it does like a folky minor thing at the end of the B part. That's cool.
Koji noodles on guitar.
Sarah:
What do you think you wanna add to it today?
Koji:
Um, so probably what I would put over it is that like, uh, to James, like it's the E—
Plays more.
Koji:
So I was thinking a melody part to make the core progression a little less obvious or at least for an intro, like—
Sarah:
Mm-hmm.
Plays more, hums.
Koji:
I kind of want to hear melodically what James is thinking for the verse.
More humming and playing.
Koji:
Okay. So I feel like the guitar part could do what the vocal melody will do. So if this is the main bit:
Plays.
Koji:
And then in the intro, it'd be like:
Plays, sings.
Koji:
So I would like to see what James thinks about that. And then I will offer for a B part:
Plays.
Koji:
Maybe I have a bridge.
Plays.
Koji:
Okay. I think the bridge can be like E minor…E minor, C, G, A minor was some sort of open thing happening.
Plays.
<EMAIL RECEIVE SOUND>
James:
[laughs] Sweet.
Sarah:
Okay. What's your first reaction to what they sent?
JAMES: Um, I liked that they…[fade]
I’m back with James at their apartment in Brooklyn. At this point, we have James’ original chords for the verses and Koji’s chords for the bridge.
James:
Um, it's cool. It like makes me wish I like knew more about music theory so that I could like, articulate, like why I think this chord progression is really cool. But I liked the little descending cords that they did for the lead-in and to the chorus. You love to hear a thing like that. Um—
Sarah:
[laughs] Why?
James:
I don't know. It just feels like dramatic, which I feel like is kind of what we're going for.
Sarah:
All right, James. So what are we adding today?
James:
That's such a good question. Um, I think that probably trying to come up with even just like a rough vocal melody would probably be good. This is also kind of, uh, not like complicated, but the wrench that is thrown in things is that my voice has dropped significantly since last we met. So I'm still kind of trying to figure out my own vocal range. I was previously a tenor, which is like the highest male quote-unquote voice. And now I'm a baritone which made me like a little sad. [laughs]
Sarah:
Aw.
James:
But I'm trying to make peace—or not like sad. It was just more like it was a change that happened like faster than I thought it would. And so now I'm kind of still trying to, uh, figure out what sounds best with my voice. So it's gonna be a process in real time.
James strums on the guitar.
James:
And that's something that I'm just trying to think about and navigate when it's like—it's like trying to play an instrument that you've never played before or maybe like trying to play guitar when you've only played like ukulele before is maybe the way that I can put it.
I watch James hum over the chords on his guitar until he comes up with a vocal melody.
James plays guitar and hums.
James:
Cool.
Sarah:
Sounds sick. Okay sweet! Well, okay, so we have a melody.
James:
Yes.
Sarah:
Do you wanna do some like rough like lyric concepts or…?
James:
Yeah. Um, I really don't want this to sound like diaspora poetry. Um, like, I really wanna avoid that at all costs. Um—
Sarah:
What's like an example of like, what are like some phrases that you'd be like, no?
James:
It feels hard to like define diaspora poetry. It's like one of those things where it's like, if you see it, like you'll know it, but it's like, I don't know, just like talking about just like a lot of like tired tropes, like I don't know, a spiritual connection to like mangoes or whatever. Or just like, just corny. I don't want it to be corny. Which will be hard because corniness is kind of the default emotional state of our people.
Sarah:
And arguably the default emotional state of emo.
James:
Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct.
James playing and strumming.
James:
Honestly, I feel like I could probably like fold some of the like vocal adjustment stuff into it. Like dysphoria is something that Koji and I have both talked about. Not really like in depth, but just like in a general sense, like in the way that like all trans people are kind of like, hey, you know that thing that we all feel? And I'm like, yeah. And I think it makes sense to kind of be working that out in song form. What else? I guess like something that I think about a lot and something that I'm honestly like emo about a lot is just the colonial nature of gender. Like Tagalog, which is like one of the languages of the Philippines is an ungendered language. Like there's only one pronoun in Tagalog and it's siya. You don't really see gendered words in any Filipino languages until the Spanish came and there's like obviously a lot of Spanish influence like in Filipino languages, there are a lot of cognates, and that includes like the gendering of like romance languages. And so that's something that I think about a lot. And something where like being Filipino and like being like trans or whatever are like just really intimately tied together for me. And like have been since I was a teenager. Um, so yeah. Anyway, that's something that I'm emo about. [laughs] Um, and yeah, I don't know. Um, I'm just gonna write this down.
<EMAIL SEND SOUND>
<EMAIL RECEIVE SOUND>
James singing and playing guitar.
Koji:
[laughs] Ja—I can, I can hear on the, on the B part, like, James can do like little quicker runs. Like my voice doesn't move quite as fast, so it's, it's fun to hear.I kind of like, uh, the, like the potential to soar in, in James's proposed melodies. I love the high drama of the Philippines, even the way that like my like elders tell stories is so musical to me. I cannot imitate their voices, but I'm just like, wow. Like you are saying the most mundane story in the most extreme way that is stressing me out! You know? [laughs] And I think like that—they love like the big grand gestures in music. So I kind of like, uh, the like—I mean like,I think about it all the time where I'm like, oh, you know what, maybe it's because of the Catholic influence that I would be susceptible to listening to music with such toxic lyrics. You can't listen, listen to like, Dashboard Confessional, and think like this is a healthy attitude about a relationship. I just don't agree with any of it. I think that we should respect each other's autonomy and move in ways that respect people's capacity and make space and make it collaborative and um, you know, relationships that allow for us to meet each other, as the new person we are in each present moment. I don't think, um, possessive love is love at all. [laughs] But you know, makes for a great karaoke and we're all—[laughs] we're still gonna do it. [laughs] But yeah. I mean emo is corny. Filipino is corny too. Yeah. I mean, this is the song we would write.
Guitar strumming.
Sarah:
What are your thoughts?
James:
I like that they made these chords more interesting. Um, and then they also had some notes. “Only had time to track guitar, but this can be basic structure for brief intro and A B parts into a bridge slash outro situation still to be written, but something sort of soaring, sing-along-y. Wanted to go a little angular and give the verse parts of space and make a little more tension with the melody you proposed. I have some lyric ideas and will work a little more on getting some down. Excited to hear what you think slash add.”
After two back and forths, the music is nearly there. Now, it’s time to add lyrics.
James:
I find a lot of like queer and trans music that is like explicitly kind of like about those themes to be like a little too on the nose, so I guess it's about like, trying to figure out like ways to convey, like what that feels like without being like, “I experience dysphoria.” [laughs] Um—
Sarah:
Let's throw out some metaphors.
James:
Yeah.
Sarah:
What's a, what does it feel like if it were a landscape?
James:
If it were a landscape? Um, I don't know. I think about either like the desert or like the suburbs, I guess. Um, cuz I kind of grew up in the suburbs in kind of like a desert-y area. Um, like it was just hot and dry all the time. I feel like I keep returning to like, boring, like the feeling of being bored, the feeling of being trapped and surveilled, I guess, in a way, which is a feeling that I associate with like the suburbs. I don’t know, I just think there's something about that sense of being like a perpetual outsider, which obviously with a lot of like emo music, that's very like self-imposed outsider status, where it’s like, it really would not be that hard for you to fit in. [laughs] Um, but I feel like I know a lot of like emo, like, Filipinos, like, especially like, um, for a lot of like queer and trans Filipinos who were like growing up in California, like at the same time that I was, I feel like I'll talk to them, even if we hadn't like, met at that point and I'll be like, oh my God, we had like such similar experiences. And we listened to like such similar music and like, I don't know, just had these same kind of like feelings of like alienation.
Guitar strumming.
<EMAIL SEND SOUND>
<EMAIL RECEIVE SOUND>
Koji:
Searching for evidence of alien life. Can't be the only one there is of my kind.
James turned those feelings of alienation into lyrics and sent them to Koji– who’s reading them aloud here.
Koji:
Fingers pressed into cold steel gets me by as I vibrate frequencies that aren't mine. Drive to the end of the earth just to watch the sunset, but we still get searched by the cops. I want nothing more than to beat myself up, but I know that there's more beyond these little boxes. You know, I always used to identify as someone that wasn't a lyrics person, because—which I only found out later was like, you know, the lyrics weren't for me. So that's why I really loved arrangement. And sometimes I'll start with a song and I'll improv and it's all—the lyrics just fall outta my head. And other times I'm really just looking for tension and space and that's kind of what I scan for in music or performance. Cuz you know, like, English will never satisfy me. And that's, that's part of why I play music is because like this is not my language. And it puts you into a box. Cuz I know that like if I just think in English and I'm, it's the inner dialogue in my head, I will fail myself and I will fail my community.
Guitar strumming and singing.
Koji:
I'd been thinking of like this idea of—I'm always thinking about it. I'm thinking about refusal, with respect to like, just refusing the state and the sort of all the shapes that the state comes into our lives. And um, I have what I think is a really good bridge or outro idea and a good chorus. Um, yeah. So the idea that I had…
Koji plays guitar and sings.
Koji (singing):
These little boxes, these little boxes
It’s not for me, it’s not for me, it’s not for anyone
It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be nowhere and the only one
And I can see, I can see a path leading me home
A path leading me, a path leading me
Koji:
That's why I wanted to talk about refusal and return. Because it's like, I refuse the state and I refuse the church and I refuse the general roles imposed on me to maintain the state and the church. And I'm interested in return. I'm—I'm thinking about things in terms of like, it's Filipino because I'm alluding to pilgrimage. Like I've, I've never been and I want to go home, like…yeah, I want to, I, I want to belong somewhere. And I feel like that's what's so complicated about living, you know, on a col—being like a person of color settler on like stolen land. I always feel displaced and I think my music's always kind of, um, my music doesn't happen without this feeling of displacement and this yearning to like belong somewhere. So like, I guess it's like, it can't help but be Filipino because, for me, how badly I want to belong.
Koji playing guitar and singing the chorus again.
Koji (singing):
These little boxes, these little boxes
It’s not for me, it’s not for me, it’s not for anyone
It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be nowhere and the only one
And I can see, I can see a path leading me home
A path leading me, a path leading me
With the song almost complete, it’s time for James and Koji to reconvene. I meet up with James at their apartment and we log on to chat with Koji.
Sarah:
The three of us are now in a zoom. Koji and James, you are now going to talk about this project, face to face or at least screen to screen, which you haven't done this whole time. Um, James and I have sort of a throwback emo middle school setup where we each have one earbud in on the Zoom. We have a My Chemical Romance song paused on the TV, which was here when I came in.
James:
Yes.
Sarah:
Um, I guess just in general how has it been for you?
Koji:
The song is a part of a through line in our relationship from like the day that we met, you know?
James:
Literally. Yeah.
Koji:
So it's, it's cool to write something that kind of celebrates that, that like adds to it. And I, I always, I always think about, um…cuz it still lingers, like, do I, do I belong? I like, I still have those feelings. They, they come.
James:
Yeah.
Koji
As much as like, I have never felt more like I belong. Um, but when, when that happens, I'm like reminded like, I’m like, oh yeah, my favorite Filipino dish is sisig. It's like the leftover parts that you fry up. And, and we made like so good. Right? And like, I don't have the language and I don't have certain ways of connecting with like my culture. Um, but yet like things like emo and punk music is what was like left for us to cook with.
Sarah:
What do you mean emo is what was left for us?
Koji:
When they rob you of your culture, like genocide is just not like a murder of the body, but it's a murder of your culture. So when I was being raised by my parents who were raised and told—their parents were told, um, you know, it's not good for your children to learn more than one language, just teach them English. And to realize that's eugenics. And to realize that legacy of eugenics is showing up in my life. So the fact that I don't have access to my culture because of my culture being like trained out of my family, what's left is a form like emo music or punk and hardcore and DIY. And I don't know how to express myself, um, in traditional ways. So I express myself in what's available to me. So I didn't choose the curriculum. I didn't choose the music, but like here I am having to work with the materials and still exist. And I didn't realize that even though the forms weren't made by us or for us, I could still make it mine.
James:
Something that I think about a lot also is that like the guitar is like a Spanish instrument. Like it was brought to the Philippines like by the Spanish. A lot of what we know as like Filipino folk music is like, it sounds similar to like Spanish, like guitar music because of like colonial influence. It literally is like an instrument like of colonization, but I think it's really cool to be—yeah, just like you said to be like kind of like, okay, this is, you know, this happened. These are the remains that we're left with and how do we like make something like anew.
Sarah:
Okay. Last kind of major—I do wanna talk about corniness. Because when we first talked about it, James, you were like, okay, I'm writing these lyrics. I don't want them to be too corny. Like I don't wanna write like diaspora poetry. And then Koji, you kind of felt differently. So I wanna hear you have a little conversation about corniness.
James:
Oh, this will be fun. Well I want to hear what you have to say about corniness.
Koji:
What did I say? What did I say? [laughs]
Sarah:
Well, you were kind of like, what do you mean? Like we're writing an emo song.
Koji:
It’s Inherently, yeah, it's inherently corny. Like, and I'm like, just like Filipino culture is corny. Have you heard the anthem? I'm like, I just, I think like, yo, we love corn nuts.
James:
[laughs]
Koji:
I dunno. No, it's corny! Emo is corny. You can't, you can't be saying all this melodramatic stuff. We have to acknowledge that it's corny.
James:
Yeah, I mean I think a big theme for me this year has been just like trying to get over cringe in general or like fear of being cringe. Um, cause I think like when I started doing like my little—I'm in like this trans choir, which is not really something that I ever thought I would do. And it was like, obviously, like that's another form of expression that is, requires a lot of earnestness, um, and is also pretty emo. Um, and I like, literally it physically pained me, like when I started going, um, cuz I was like, oh my God, like, it's so cringe. And like there's actually no getting around that. Like it is cringe and it is corny. And I literally had to push myself to be like, you know what, and that's fine.
Koji:
Yeah, could everyone participate if these forms weren't corny? I don't know. Cuz you can just—you can just do it and laugh at yourself and laugh at your friends and laugh with your friends. And like I think we need some respite from the violence of the colonized world and, and we found that, we created for our, that for ourselves.
James:
I mean I actually I think like you saying that made me realize that like in the same way that like a lot of like queer culture is about kind of like fabulousness and excess that is really about escaping from like tragedy. I think there's actually like a lot of similarity there where I think a lot of like Filipino—a lot of like Filipinos, when it comes to tragedy, like have this attitude of kind of bahala na, which is like, fuck it, basically. Like, you know, just like, it's like it's up to the powers that be. Yeah, I don't know, I think like a lot of Filipino culture is like, and in the same way that like a lot of queer culture is like, you know, we're kind of like papering over this with like glitter and kind of dealing with the violence of like living in a cishet world through beauty, I think actually like Filipino culture and queer culture, like have that in common.
Koji
Yeah, that’s real. Yeah. There are just like moments where I'm like, ah, I'm touching that liberatory future, like in practice and that it's possible for all of us. And that like, you know, as corny as it sounds, like I do believe like we will fucking win. [both laugh] So I do—like, I do believe that.
Song plays:
James (singing):
Searching for evidence of alien life
Can’t be the only one there is of my kind
Fingers pressed into cold steel gets me by
As I vibrate frequencies that aren’t mine
Drive to the end of the earth just to watch
Sunset but we still get searched by the cops
I want nothing more than to beam myself up
But I know there’s more behind these little boxes
Koji (singing)
These little boxes
It’s not for me, It’s not for me, it’s not for anyone
It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be nowhere and the only one
And I can see, I can see a path leading me home
A path leading me, a path leading me
James (singing):
I’m sending signals that I’m still alive
Trying to reach you across space and time
3,000 miles and ten years down the line
Your dissonant sound waves will finally align
Won’t feel endangered but you’re not in danger
And all your bitter enemies are distant strangers
The world breaks your heart in a new way each day
But most of the time you’ll get up anyway
Koji (singing)
Ahh
It’s not for me, It’s not for me, it’s not for anyone
It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be nowhere and the only one
And I can see, I can see a path leading me home
A path leading me, a path leading me
Whoa, whoa, a path leading me
Whoa, whoa, a path leading me home
You never have to go back to where you came from
And you don’t have to know where you’re going
The refusal, the return
The refusal, the return
You never have to go back to where you came from
And you don’t have to know where you’re going
It’s not for me, It’s not for me, it’s not for anyone
It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be nowhere and the only one
And I can see, I can see a path leading me home
A path leading me, a path leading me
It’s not for me, It’s not for me, it’s not for anyone
It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be nowhere and the only one
And I can see, I can see a path leading me home
A path leading me, a path leading me
That was relocations, a Filipemo song by James Factora and Koji Shiraki.
Sounds Gay is created and produced by me, Sarah Esocoff.
Our story editor is JT Green of Molten Heart.
Cass Adair is our consulting producer.
Additional editing by Gianna Palmer.
Original music by Kris McCormick.
Mixing and sound design by Casey Holford.
Fact-checking by Serena Solin.
Our program manager is Sam Termine.
Sounds Gay is a Stitcher Studios production, and is executive produced by Sarah Bentley, Bill Crandall, Jen Derwin, Mike Spinella, Kameel Stanley, and myself.
You can find Sounds Gay on the SiriusXM App, Pandora, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. If you like the show, please rate, review and share so other people can find us.